by Dana Guthrie Martin

“I want to keep telling you about the dead. They write the same word over & over again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the tour
Welcome to our first-ever Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour. Like every new thing we are trying out and sharing here at Read Write Poem — we don’t know *exactly* how this is going to go. This column is especially complicated because it happens on several members’ blogs and stretches out over several weeks.

What the heck am I talking about? I don’t know. Let me just give you the skinny, and then we’ll see if it all makes sense. (If not, you can ask questions in the comments section and we’ll be happy to provide answers.)

The skinny

1. This post is your home base for the tour. This is where we will post the book that’s on the current tour, the names and blog/site URLs for every member taking part in the tour, and the dates that you can go check out their response to the book currently being discussed. (Think of this column as a conversation among members, with the conversational ball being thrown into the air and caught by another member all month long.)
2. If you ever want to remind yourself who is talking about the collection next and when to look for a tour post on each participating member’s blog, you can always come right back to this post, where all the information will be at your fingertips.
3. We’ll also post news items in the Read Write Poem newsfeed when a response is up at someone’s blog, so you will always know when the tour has stopped someplace new, simply by checking out our news or checking your Read Write Poem RSS feed.

Get involved
Want to get involved as a reviewer? Just join the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour group, and then add your name to the forum thread titled “Sign up to be a Virtual Book Tour reviewer.”

Want to get your book on the tour? We’ve already set up partnerships with a number of presses, and we’re booked out several months. We also do the tour only once a month, since it takes so much time to coordinate, which means we’re extremely limited in terms of what we can include. With that in mind, feel free to have your publisher send a query to virtualbooktour (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.

About At Night, the Dead.
This darkly delectable poetry collection was written by Lisa Ciccarello, one of the winners of the 2009 Blood Pudding Press chapbook contest.

Here is an excerpt from the collection:

At night, the dead:

the dark is a black bag where the eyes are kept. In the dark you walk with arms outstretched. I want to keep telling you about the dead. They write the same word over & over again. They make it like a path to walk by.

Poet and editor J. Michael Wahlgren says, “Anyone who uses words like thrice & tautology deserves 5 stars. This is a hot chapbook, production top notch!”

Like all work from Blood Pudding Press, every copy of this collection is handmade. At Night, the Dead. is bound with a small expanse of luxurious velvet ribbon. (Ooh! Aah!) The cover art was designed by artist Emma Trithart. I happen to own this collection, and I can say that it’s stunning — a work of art, both in terms of the content and the presentation.

For information on ordering At Night, the Dead., visit the Blood Pudding Press Etsy shop.

Tour stops for At Night, the Dead.
Aug. 27 :: Julie Jordan Scott :: Julie Jordan Scott
Sept. 1 :: Jill Crammond Wickham :: Jillypoet
Sept. 3 :: Emily May Anderson :: Rice in the Cupboard
Sept. 8 :: Pam Olson :: Amputated Moon
Sept. 10 :: Heather Strang :: Heather Strang
Sept. 15 :: Catherine Fitchett :: Poetry Chook
Sept. 16 :: Keith Wilson :: The Robotto-Mulatto
Sept. 17 :: Elizabeth Pickett :: Elusive Ellipsis
Sept. 22 :: Ren Powell/Babel Fruit :: More Babel

Next month, the Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour will feature Maya Ganesan’s Apologies to an Apple.

Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. She writes things and stuff. Most of the time, her things and stuff happen to be poetry, or at least they call themselves poetry. She has a robot named Feldman. He’s writing a book of poems.